Wounds Inflicted By Trump, Supporters Won’t Heal Easily After Election

How Can We Come To Terms With Those Who’ve Ignored Our Humanity? 

As we head into the final days of the election, all across social media friends and family and strangers are sharing memes that say things like, “There’s more than unites us than divides us,” “All we need to do is sit down and talk with each other” and “After the election, we need to put aside our differences and come together!”

And I’m sitting here, watching the things that people have said and the people they’ve defended and I’m asking myself, “How?” 

How can I sit down at a table with someone who believes that sexual assault is something that should be glossed over and excused? 

How can I work on building a relationship with someone who supports the idea of banning an entire religion from our country? 

How can I say that I love someone who has no problem putting a man in power who surrounds himself with evangelical leaders who would be happiest if LGBTQ people disappeared?

This hasn’t been a typical election by any means. We haven’t been debating lofty policy ideas and working toward the betterment of the Republic. We all believe that we’ve done what we’ve done in order to save the Republic, but lines were crossed. 

Promoting a man who took his state’s budget for HIV prevention and treatment and turned it over toward deadly and absuive conversion therapy crosses a line.

Denying all evidence — including witnesses — of sexual assault and saying that those who have come forward are both doing it for attention and not even pretty enough to be assaulted crosses a line.  

It isn’t a matter of one side not listening to the other. It isn’t a matter of us trying to talk over each other and shouting to get ourselves heard. If anything, we’ve all been heard far more than ever before.

The problem is what’s been said and what’s been done. And I’m not even talking about taxes or emails or threats of nuclear war — not that those things aren’t worth discussing, but, they really aren’t in the same category as everything else.  

We’ve found ourselves back in a culture of church burnings and simulated lynchings and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and all kinds of bigotry. 

Those kinds of problems aren’t going to be swept aside or under the rug after the election. That box has been opened. We’re going to have to deal with it and it’s not going to be easy. And expecting someone to sit down at the same table with someone who quite literally wants them dead is far too much to ask. Frankly, I don’t know how to do it. 

To find common ground starts with the assumption that there is humanity in the person across from you. There are too many times Trump and his supporters have ignored their opponents’ humanity and I don’t know if I can trust them anymore. 

I’ve already said here that I’m enthusiastically voting for Hillary Clinton and I’ve certainly described what you’re voting for when you vote for Trump or the Republican Party. I think I need to go one step further: When you vote for Trump you’re endorsing his policies, his thoughts and his beliefs. You’re saying that he’s the kind of guy you want in the White House and his are the kinds of policies that you want our country to take on. 

At this point, I honestly don’t know how I can have a relationship with someone who believes that. 

Robbie Medwed is an LGBTQ activist, educator, and writer in Atlanta, GA. His column appears here weekly. Follow him on Twitter: @rjmedwed